Sometimes you have to select completely different golf equipment off the tee to account for the pin place on the inexperienced.
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Welcome to Play Smart, a common GOLF.com game-improvement column that can provide help to play smarter, higher golf.
Smart golf is profitable golf — and I’m not simply saying that to bolster this column. With margins so slim on the highest degree, and the expertise hole so slender, the winner every week is often the one who not solely performs the perfect, however thinks the perfect, too.
With analytics turning into commonplace on the PGA Tour, gamers are attacking golf programs in other ways than ever earlier than. Instead of counting on their intestine, they’re leaning on numbers to tell each resolution.
Removing emotion from selections is vital for maximizing success, but it surely’t not simple to do. Our feelings could be overpowering, and it could make the smart move really feel just like the fallacious one — even when the numbers again it up.
Keith Mitchell’s course-management technique
Keith Mitchell had a heck of a season final 12 months with the motive force in his palms, rating seventh in SG: Off the Tee. But regardless of that success with an important weapon in the bag, he couldn’t crack the highest 50 in the FedEx Cup standings. The most important factor holding him again? Approach play, the place he ranked one hundred and sixtieth in strokes gained on the season.
Coming into 2024, he knew one thing wanted to vary, so he enlisted the assistance of Mookie DeMoss, an assistant coach at his alma mater, the University of Georgia.
“Definitely looked at some historical data and some stats to see where I needed to improve,” Mitchell stated. “We talked a lot about some stuff I need to do. I got to give him a lot credit.”
With the assistance of DeMoss, Mitchell realized he was missing in course management. His strokes-gained stats have been weak when hitting out of the tough, however he continued to make use of a bomb-and-gouge technique in spite of it.
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“Depending on where the pin was, wasn’t looking where the pin was relative to what club I was hitting off the tee on some par-4s — didn’t realize how big of an impact that was,” Mitchell stated. “I was really losing some strokes gained [on] approach [shots] based off course management and where I was on — where the pin was on the green and where I was in the fairway rough.”
It’s at all times simpler to get the ball nearer to the pin when you have got a shorter method shot, however Mitchell wasn’t factoring in the outlet location into this equation. Sure, he was hitting the ball nearer to the inexperienced, however when he missed the green, he couldn’t get any spin on the ball as a result of he was hitting out of the tough. It wasn’t a enormous problem when he had inexperienced to work with, however when a flag was tucked behind a bunker, he had no likelihood to get the ball near the outlet.
In his first begin of the season on the Sony Open, Mitchell determined to vary that tactic. When his dispersion sample with the motive force would put him in the tough on holes with tucked pins, he left the large stick in the bag and opted for a 2-iron as an alternative.
“I remember telling [caddie] Johnny [Limanti] walking off the tee, ‘Man, I just felt like that I was playing scared,’” Mitchell stated. “He goes, ‘That was playing smart. That’s what it takes to win a golf tournament.’”
Smart golf means maximizing your probabilities of success. And in a sport with margins as skinny as golf, enjoying the odds is completely important.
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